Sharon Stone films banned in China after 'karma' comment

Source: CNN

The 50-year-old actress suggested last week that the devastating May 12 earthquake in China could have been the result of bad karma over the government's treatment of Tibet. That prompted the founder of one of China's biggest cinema chains to say his company would not show her films in his theaters, according to a story in The Hollywood Reporter.

"I'm not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don't think anyone should be unkind to anyone else," Stone said Thursday during a Cannes Film Festival red-carpet interview with Hong Kong's Cable Entertainment News. "And then this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and then I thought, is that karma? When you're not nice that the bad things happen to you?"

Ng See-Yuen, founder of the UME Cineplex chain and the chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers, called Stone's comments "inappropriate," adding that actors should not bring personal politics to comments about a natural disaster that has left five million Chinese homeless, according to the Reporter.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/05/28/stone.karma.ap/index.html

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All the kids who ever stole a cookie from a jar face ETERNAL DAMNATION.

And I still don't give a crap about what she has to say.

It all sounds like made up news designed for distraction.

The statement doesn't even make sense. What did Tibet do to get their bad karma?

And I still don't give a crap about her opinion.

Please don't feed the animals!

Maybe if no pays attention they'll go away...

Does that make you feel better?

what's up with your fixation on porn stars?

i can't find a single shred of evidence that she ever appeared in a pornographic film.

of anything she may have done in the past.

nt

you would think she could have used her brain instead of her nakedness.

she started her movie career in 1980. i'm not familiar with all her films but i think the first time she did any serious nudity was with basic instincts and that was 1992, hardly the start of her career. besides, what do you have against nudity?

with her high IQ she obviously did use her brain as she got into a business that made her quite wealthy.

i'm not sticking up for what she said about karma referring to the earthquake in china. it was a stupid comment, obviously, since the people in china that suffered were the innocent citizens and not the corrupt government. i'm sure looking back at the statement now, she wishes she could take it back.

that said, let's not just start making stuff up about her.

nt

Grow up, willya?

to make DU proud
:sarcasm:

Yes, her comment was out of line but Sharon Stone has been a major activist for such issues as AIDs research and Darfur.

Sharon should apologize for her comment. Yes China has seriously done some bad human rights violations but that doesnt' justify using karma to blame for the death of all those innocent people in China.

and addressed the top response in addition. Thanks

I do respect her for the activist work that she has done. I for one believe in Celebrities who have their pet causes because it helps bring the issue to the attention of the common folks. You think any of us (not just DUers but general population especially here in the US) would know about Darfur if it wasn't for folks like George Clooney and Don Cheadle constantly bringing up the topic? Because our news media was barely covering it. Hell that's how I learned about it because Darfur was getting absolutely no other press from the media. It was a lil human rights drama best swept under the rug - at least that's how the media treated it.

And let's face it - AIDs exploded in the 80s under an administration (Reagan) that refused to acknowldge it or pay any money to actually deal with it. And it was once again the Celebrities that came out and said "This is not right" and not only help raise the funds to fight this disease but help put pressure on our government to do more.

So again, I'm not giving Stone a free pass on a comment that was truly unwarranted but I'm not about to treat her like some cheap porn star or religious nut job either.

nt

So now a women who flaunts her beauty or sexiness in movies is a "porn star"?

Really, why all this hatred for women on this site?

I was frankly really embarrassed by the sort of mean-spirited comments about Anna Nicole, and Lohan and other female actresses. Sure there lives are in the limelight as an occupational hazard, but the kind of shit spewing that passes for criticism around here is sometimes appalling.

Suffice it to say, her remark was pretty stupid. It ranks up there with Falwell blaming 9/11 on Gay people, but suggesting that sex workers can't be spiritual, or that Sharon Stone is a porn star even for some pretty tame nudity is just as stupid.

Using Stone's logic, the Tibetans must have done something really bad and gotten bad karma to deserve the oppression they are now under.

Or various other right wing preachers.

She made a fool of herself.

are not only limited to the right, sadly.

Jerry Falwell reincarnated?

WTF!

Seriously!

Yes her comments were bad.

But if you knew anything about Sharon Stone she is hardly anything like those to religious nutjobs.

She has been very outspoken about Darfur, perhaps that was where that comment came from.

It was wrong for her to do it but it's wrong for you to compare her to 2 people who she has nothing in common with.

I admit to knowing little about Stone's progressive agenda, but it cannot be denied that her comments are analogous to Robertson's. Saying that the death of thousands, caused by a natural disaster, was due to gays, lesbians, or the actions of a corrupt government does a disservice to the powers that be, whether god or karma.

I'm a little suprised at Sharon Stone going down this judgemental road.

The people that were killed or are homeless, they were just people, not evil govt's.

Yes, she has done a lot of good work. But this is no different than a Robertson or Falwell comment.

I'm fairly certain that few countries carry with it as much "bad karma" as we do for our murdering of innocent Iraqis.

Rp

Germany? Russia? China? Japan? Sudan? Iran? England? Every country that participated in the slave trade?

There's plenty of evil to go around, we dont have a monopoly on it.

But I find it odd that Americans seem to make that argument the most. They made that argument during the Tsunami as well and it was sickening. Of course these same people also used that argument to blame gays for 9/11 and a city of sin for it's own destruction in Katrina.


Rp

There were many in the past and will be many in the future.... It has something to do with power and greed...

But other than that, I think you're right about her screwy theory.

"Everything happens for a reason!"

Shouldn't we be held just as responsible as you evidently hold the Chinese people? Hell, we actually participate in the selection of our leaders--in theory, anyway.

because it was going to have a gay parade, per Rev. Hagee. And New York got hit by the "ter'ists" because it is a sinful city, per...was it Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell?

Ridiculous thing for her to say. I hope she gets hard financially.

But I don't believe it is collective punishment, WTF Sharon?

Talking about karma...lol

People are dead. So thousands of poor slave laborers paid the price by her logic.

Yeah, that'll show those commies.

I'm no fan of China. I wish we could cut off their imports and stiff them on the billions we owe them.

I'm no fan of this unthinking "actress" either.

The chinese government is about to bask in overwhelmingly positive publicity with the upcoming Olympics. They are changing for the better, hopefully, but they still persecute christians, falung gong practitioners and dissidents. They use those political prisoners as slave labor, too.

I will never forget the chinese military opening fire on the protestors in Tianaman Square. It was brutal. It was done in full knowlege that the whole world was watching on tv, too.

China's All-Seeing Eye
With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.
NAOMI KLEIN Posted May 29, 2008 3:24 PM
snip--
Such efforts have provided China's rulers with something even more valuable than surveillance technology from Western democracies: the ability to claim that they are just like us. Liu Zhengrong, a senior official dealing with China's Internet policy, has defended Golden Shield and other repressive measures by invoking the Patriot Act and the FBI's massive e-mail-mining operations. "It is clear that any country's legal authorities closely monitor the spread of illegal information," he said. "We have noted that the U.S. is doing a good job on this front." Lin Jiang Huai, the head of China Information Security Technology, credits America for giving him the idea to sell biometric IDs and other surveillance tools to the Chinese police. "Bush helped me get my vision," he has said. Similarly, when challenged on the fact that dome cameras are appearing three to a block in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, Chinese companies respond that their model is not the East German Stasi but modern-day London.
snip--
The Fourth Amendment prohibition against illegal search and seizure made it into the U.S. Constitution precisely because its drafters understood that the power to snoop is addictive. Even if we happen to trust in the good intentions of the snoopers, the nature of any government can change rapidly — which is why the Constitution places limits on the tools available to any regime. But the drafters could never have imagined the commercial pressures at play today. The global homeland-security business is now worth an estimated $200 billion — more than Hollywood and the music industry combined. Any sector of that size inevitably takes on its own momentum. New markets must be found — which, in the Big Brother business, means an endless procession of new enemies and new emergencies: crime, immigration, terrorism.
snip--"I can guarantee you that there are people in the Bush administration who are studying the use of surveillance technologies being developed here and have at least skeletal plans to implement them at home," he says. "We can already see it in New York with CCTV cameras. Once you have the cameras in place, you have the infrastructure for a powerful tracking system. I'm worried about what this will mean if the U.S. government goes totalitarian and starts employing these technologies more than they are already. I'm worried about the threat this poses to American democracy."

Herrington pauses. "George W. Bush,"he adds, "would do what they are doing here in a heartbeat if he could."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20797485/chinas_allseeing_eye

China has the poential to make Orwell's country called "Oceania" in the novel 1984 look like a democratic utopia.

China's All-Seeing Eye
With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.
NAOMI KLEIN Posted May 29, 2008 3:24 PM
snip--
Such efforts have provided China's rulers with something even more valuable than surveillance technology from Western democracies: the ability to claim that they are just like us. Liu Zhengrong, a senior official dealing with China's Internet policy, has defended Golden Shield and other repressive measures by invoking the Patriot Act and the FBI's massive e-mail-mining operations. "It is clear that any country's legal authorities closely monitor the spread of illegal information," he said. "We have noted that the U.S. is doing a good job on this front." Lin Jiang Huai, the head of China Information Security Technology, credits America for giving him the idea to sell biometric IDs and other surveillance tools to the Chinese police. "Bush helped me get my vision," he has said. Similarly, when challenged on the fact that dome cameras are appearing three to a block in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, Chinese companies respond that their model is not the East German Stasi but modern-day London.
snip--
The Fourth Amendment prohibition against illegal search and seizure made it into the U.S. Constitution precisely because its drafters understood that the power to snoop is addictive. Even if we happen to trust in the good intentions of the snoopers, the nature of any government can change rapidly — which is why the Constitution places limits on the tools available to any regime. But the drafters could never have imagined the commercial pressures at play today. The global homeland-security business is now worth an estimated $200 billion — more than Hollywood and the music industry combined. Any sector of that size inevitably takes on its own momentum. New markets must be found — which, in the Big Brother business, means an endless procession of new enemies and new emergencies: crime, immigration, terrorism.
snip--
"I can guarantee you that there are people in the Bush administration who are studying the use of surveillance technologies being developed here and have at least skeletal plans to implement them at home," he says. "We can already see it in New York with CCTV cameras. Once you have the cameras in place, you have the infrastructure for a powerful tracking system. I'm worried about what this will mean if the U.S. government goes totalitarian and starts employing these technologies more than they are already. I'm worried about the threat this poses to American democracy."

Herrington pauses. "George W. Bush,"he adds, "would do what they are doing here in a heartbeat if he could."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20797485/chinas_allseeing_eye

China has the poential to make Orwell's country called "Oceania" in the novel 1984 look like a democratic utopia.

problem. Good grief. I'm amazed this has gotten as much attention as it has. Who should care?

I can see Chinas resentment to that statement.